Despite the charge for market manipulation remain VW CEO Herbert Diess and Supervisory Board Chairman Hans Dieter Pötsch in office. The board of the automaker decided that at a special meeting in Wolfsburg. The bureau of the control committee had already on Tuesday voted to hold on to the two managers.
"Due to the extensive and independent own investigations carried out since autumn 2015, the Supervisory Board is still unable to discern any deliberately omitted information from the capital market from today's perspective," it said. "This has not changed after examination of the indictment." The cooperation with Diess and Pötsch will therefore continue.
Managers reject allegations
The prosecutor Braunschweig accuses today's CEO Diess, the former CFO and current Supervisory Board chairman Pötsch and the then CEO Martin Winterkorn offenses against the Securities Trading Act during the diesel scandal.
In 2015, the managers intentionally informed the stock market too late about the billions in costs incurred by the discovery of the exhaust gas manipulation for the Wolfsburg-based carmaker and thereby illegally influenced the share price.
Winterkorn resigned as chief executive four years ago in September following the announcement of the millionfold diesel manipulation. All three managers had rejected the allegations of the prosecutor.
VW has to stick for manipulated diesel car
In another case in the course of the exhaust gas scandal, the Higher Regional Court (OLG) Frankfurt has stated that the company must always be liable for cars with the EA 189 diesel engine. A claim for return of the vehicle and the refund of the purchase price result from an "intentional immoral damage" by the company, according to a decision of the OLG. ( AZ 17 U 45/19 )
The judges thus "basically" the complaint of a car buyer, who had acquired a 2009 VW Tiguan EA 189 series EU 5. After becoming aware of the diesel scandal, he had demanded the repayment of the purchase price less a compensation for use.
The court decided now in his favor: The development and the marketing of the vehicle, which was provided with an inadmissible defeat device, constituted a "immoral act of VW AG," it said. The defeat device was easily recognizable that the operating permit of the vehicles had been threatened.
The amount of the repayment amount must be determined by an expert, the court said. The Hanau district court had rejected in the first instance the complaint of the buyer, so that the case had been appealed.
